grpc
Advanced tools
Package description
The grpc npm package is a Node.js library for making and handling remote procedure calls (RPC) using the gRPC framework. It allows for efficient communication between services, supports multiple programming languages, and provides features like load balancing, authentication, and more.
Creating a gRPC Server
This code demonstrates how to create a basic gRPC server in Node.js. It loads a .proto file, defines a service, and starts the server to listen for incoming requests.
const grpc = require('grpc');
const protoLoader = require('@grpc/proto-loader');
const packageDefinition = protoLoader.loadSync('path/to/your/protofile.proto', {});
const protoDescriptor = grpc.loadPackageDefinition(packageDefinition);
const yourService = protoDescriptor.yourService;
function yourFunction(call, callback) {
callback(null, { message: 'Hello ' + call.request.name });
}
const server = new grpc.Server();
server.addService(yourService.service, { yourFunction: yourFunction });
server.bind('127.0.0.1:50051', grpc.ServerCredentials.createInsecure());
server.start();Creating a gRPC Client
This code demonstrates how to create a gRPC client in Node.js. It connects to a gRPC server, makes a request, and handles the response.
const grpc = require('grpc');
const protoLoader = require('@grpc/proto-loader');
const packageDefinition = protoLoader.loadSync('path/to/your/protofile.proto', {});
const protoDescriptor = grpc.loadPackageDefinition(packageDefinition);
const yourService = protoDescriptor.yourService;
const client = new yourService('localhost:50051', grpc.credentials.createInsecure());
client.yourFunction({ name: 'World' }, (error, response) => {
if (!error) {
console.log('Greeting:', response.message);
} else {
console.error(error);
}
});Streaming RPC
This code demonstrates how to implement a streaming RPC in a gRPC server. It handles incoming stream data and sends responses back to the client.
const grpc = require('grpc');
const protoLoader = require('@grpc/proto-loader');
const packageDefinition = protoLoader.loadSync('path/to/your/protofile.proto', {});
const protoDescriptor = grpc.loadPackageDefinition(packageDefinition);
const yourService = protoDescriptor.yourService;
function yourStreamFunction(call) {
call.on('data', (request) => {
console.log('Received:', request);
call.write({ message: 'Hello ' + request.name });
});
call.on('end', () => {
call.end();
});
}
const server = new grpc.Server();
server.addService(yourService.service, { yourStreamFunction: yourStreamFunction });
server.bind('127.0.0.1:50051', grpc.ServerCredentials.createInsecure());
server.start();The grpc-js package is a pure JavaScript implementation of gRPC for Node.js. It is designed to replace the native grpc package and offers better compatibility with modern JavaScript features and tools. Unlike grpc, grpc-js does not require native code compilation, making it easier to install and use across different environments.
The grpc-web package allows gRPC to be used in web applications. It provides a JavaScript client library that can communicate with gRPC services from the browser. This package is useful for integrating gRPC with frontend applications, whereas the grpc package is primarily focused on server-side and backend communication.
The grpc-node package is a collection of gRPC libraries for Node.js, including grpc, grpc-js, and grpc-tools. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and libraries for working with gRPC in Node.js, offering flexibility in choosing the right implementation for your needs.
Readme
As of April 2021 this library is deprecated and will no longer receive any updates. We recommend using @grpc/grpc-js instead.
node: This requires node to be installed, version 4.0 or above. If you instead have the nodejs executable on Debian, you should install the nodejs-legacy package.
Note: If you installed node via a package manager and the version is still less than 4.0, try directly installing it from nodejs.org.
Install the gRPC NPM package
npm install grpc
The following command can be used to build from source when installing the package from npm:
npm install grpc --build-from-source
The --build-from-source option will work even when installing another package that depends on grpc. To build only grpc from source, you can use the argument --build-from-source=grpc.
The official electron documentation recommends to build all of your native packages from source. While the reasons behind this are technically good - many native extensions won't be packaged to work properly with electron - the gRPC source code is fairly difficult to build from source due to its complex nature, and we're also providing working electron pre-built binaries. Therefore, we recommend that you do not follow this model for using gRPC with electron. Also, for the same reason, electron-rebuild will always build from source. We advise you to not use this tool if you are depending on gRPC. Please note that there's not just one way to get native extensions running in electron, and that there's never any silver bullet for anything. The following instructions try to cater about some of the most generic ways, but different edge cases might require different methodologies.
The best way to get gRPC to work with electron is to do this, possibly in the postinstall script of your package.json file:
npm rebuild --target=2.0.0 --runtime=electron --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/electron
Note that the 2.0.0 above is the electron runtime version number. You will need to update this every time you go on a different version of the runtime.
If you have more native dependencies than gRPC, and they work better when built from source, you can explicitely specify which extension to build the following way:
npm rebuild --build-from-source=sqlite3 --target=2.0.0 --runtime=electron --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/electron
This way, if you depend on both grpc and sqlite3, only the sqlite3 package will be rebuilt from source, leaving the grpc package to use its precompiled binaries.
git submodule update --init --recursive from the repository root.cd packages/grpc-native-core.npm install --build-from-source.Note: On Windows, this might fail due to nodejs issue #4932 in which case, you will see something like the following in npm install's output (towards the very beginning):
..
Building the projects in this solution one at a time. To enable parallel build, please add the "/m" switch.
WINDOWS_BUILD_WARNING
"..\IMPORTANT: Due to https:\github.com\nodejs\node\issues\4932, to build this library on Windows, you must first remove C:\Users\jenkins\.node-gyp\4.4.0\include\node\openssl"
...
..
To fix this, you will have to delete the folder C:\Users\<username>\.node-gyp\<node_version>\include\node\openssl and retry npm install
You can configure the location from which the pre-compiled binaries are downloaded during installation.
npm install --grpc_node_binary_host_mirror=https://your-url.com
Or defining grpc_node_binary_host_mirror in your .npmrc.
See the API Documentation.
To run the test suite, simply run npm test in the install location.
FAQs
gRPC Library for Node
The npm package grpc receives a total of 160,040 weekly downloads. As such, grpc popularity was classified as popular.
We found that grpc demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 3 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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